Clothing Optional: And Other Ways to Read These Stories | 
 enlarge | Author: Alan Zweibel
Publisher: Villard
Category: Book
List Price: $22.00
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Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 440016
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 272
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.7 x 1.1
ISBN: 0345500865
Dewey Decimal Number: 818.5402
EAN: 9780345500861
ASIN: 0345500865
Publication Date: September 16, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
“Garry, it’s Alan. Look, I’m calling because I just felt the need to tell someone that I’m forty-four years old, and about an hour ago, for the first time in my life, I put suntan lotion on my ass. I’ll explain later. Bye.”
In Clothing Optional, Alan Zweibel offers a collection of laugh-out-loud personal narratives, essays, short fiction, dialogues, and even a few whimsical drawings. Zweibel first made a name for himself as one of the original writers for Saturday Night Live, but his career’s humble beginnings included creating one-liners for Catskill comedians at seven dollars a pop. That experience is only one of the hysterically inspired anecdotes (“Comic Dialogue”) in this quirky compilation.
Zweibel confesses his first love, as a young Hebrew school student, for Abraham’s wife, Sarah (“At this point, Sarah’s husband had been dead for more than three thousand years–so, really, who would I be hurting?”); recounts the time he was sent to a nudist resort to write an article (“The fact that I brought luggage is, in itself, worthy of some discussion”); offers a touching tribute to Saturday Night Live writer and mentor Herb Sargent (“Herb was New York. But an older, more romantic New York that took place in black and white like the kind of TV I grew up on and wanted to be a part of someday”); and imagines a scenario in which Sergeant Joe Friday, the stiff, monotoned character from Dragnet, is inexplicably partnered with Snoop Dogg (“Damn, Friday. You gotta learn to chill. Take some free time and kick it with your boys”)
Every piece is punctuated with the same wit and insight that have come to define Zweibel’s humor.
Unhinged and hilarious, Clothing Optional is an unguided tour through the uniquely peculiar life and mind of a man who The New York Times said “has earned a place in the pantheon of American pop culture.”
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| Customer Reviews:
like any good comic, Zweibel's best writing will make you pause and ponder life's absurdities, if only for a valuable moment November 18, 2008
Bookreporter.com (New York, New York)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The balance in your 401(k) is shrinking. The value of your home is drifting downward like the falling autumn leaves. Need a good laugh? Who doesn't these days? Thanks to CLOTHING OPTIONAL, Alan Zweibel's collection of short stories, personal essays, sketches and occasional pieces (along with a Vonnegut-like drawing or two), your prayers may have been answered.
Zweibel was one of the original writers on "Saturday Night Live" and perhaps is best known for BUNNY BUNNY, the touching memoir of his close friendship with Gilda Radner. Crediting his show business career to the 23 law schools that refused to admit him, Zweibel shares a Jewish comic sensibility with contemporaries from Long Island like his close friend, Billy Crystal. "Woody Allen's my idol," Zweibel writes, and there's also an Allenesque aura that hovers unmistakably over these pages. CLOTHING OPTIONAL is something of a grab bag of material, culled from Zweibel's writings for publications as diverse as the AARP Bulletin and Atlantic Monthly. Like a solid standup routine, if one piece doesn't suit your taste, just wait a minute, because the next one is likely to score.
The targets of Zweibel's observational wit are wide-ranging, but he has a striking fondness for biblically-themed material. He confesses that as an 11-year-old his first love was Sarah, Abraham's wife. While he admires the fact that she was "wise and understanding," one principal attraction was a very practical one: "Plus, at this point in time, Sarah's husband had been dead for more than three thousand years --- so really, who would I be hurting?" He also offers the tale of God's dialogue with Joshua and a hapless caterer named Mendel that provides a take on the story of Jericho's fall unlike anything you learned in Sunday school.
The book's title piece describes Zweibel's magazine assignment to write about a nudist club in Palm Springs. From his arrival at a "naked tea" wearing "gym shorts and a Yankees nightshirt that extended just below the knee," let's just say he undergoes a stunningly abrupt transformation in his attitude toward nudity. "I realized I liked these naked people," he writes. "They were without pretense in addition to being without clothing." By the time his departure day arrives, he's calculating exactly how long he can linger and still cover the 114 miles he needs to travel to reach his daughter's softball game on time, his estimates becoming ever more fanciful along the way.
Alongside the numerous examples of Zweibel's wit, often of the most self-deprecating variety, appears a touching tribute to one of his mentors, Herb Sargent, another "SNL" writer. Zweibel was drawn to Sargent because "Herb was New York. But an older, more romantic New York that took place in black and white, like the kind of TV I grew up on and wanted to be a part of someday. Comedy with a conscience. And mindful of its power to influence." The conclusion of this remembrance is powerful enough to make you reach for the phone or send an email to an old friend who has slipped from your life.
In a similar spirit is the piece entitled "Comic Dialogue," a series of conversations between Zweibel, in the early days of his career as a comedy writer, and a Catskills comic who introduces the young Alan to the taxonomy of stardom: "unknowns, semi-names, names, stars, big stars and superstars." When Alan writes a movie script he thinks will help lift the comic out of "semi-name" status, the comedian's rebuff is poignant and rich with irony.
Not every piece here hits the mark. The concluding sketch, "Between Cars," about the courtship of toll collectors at a deserted parkway exit, probably goes on a bit too long, while a couple of the shorter ones feel undercooked. But these weaker efforts are balanced by ones like "Barbarians at the Plate," Zweibel's account of the emotionally draining season he served as commissioner of his son's Little League. Or "Happy," the wistful encounter between a retired baseball player living in obscurity in Florida and one of his fans.
Nothing you read in CLOTHING OPTIONAL is likely to radically transform your worldview, unless you adopt Zweibel as some sort of existentialist Long Island philosopher. But like any good comic, his best writing will make you pause and ponder life's absurdities, if only for a valuable moment. And in hard times laughter can be a tonic, a prescription this book more than satisfies.
--- Reviewed by Harvey Freedenberg
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